Okay, that aside, interesting premise, cool monster, but there are few flaws: one, it is far too short. You rush things and skate over others to get through certain parts of the story. Would it kill you to elaborate? Two, Harry never uses any of those spells, except possibly Somnus. He increases his repertoire, sure, but not that much. Three, it all feels very cold and impersonal, as if a written report, rather than a story. Four, Charity isn't going to be that revealing. There is no way in hell that she'd just go out and say that.

As the first reviewer said, there is potential here. But its a long way from done. I would say you have here a story arc with some potential ideas for plot and scenes.

One of the perks of fanfic is that for all non-original characters, the character development has already been done for you, all you have to do is keep faithful to the original author's work to be good there. You have some research to do in this area, as much of this doesn't ring "true" to what we (as readers) would expect from those characters. The more you deviate, the less likely readers are to spend time reading your work. Fact of life.

The first reviewer had some good points regarding writing style, although there is no one, true way to go about it. But some styles work better than others, and when starting out its usually best to go with what works unless you hit a point where it doesn't work for some aspect of the story you want to tell. Thats not original advice on my part either. The advice about looking at successful books for how paragraphs are structured and writing style is very good advice. Study successful writers.

Be sure to add in some conflict and drama. Have some emotion and physical reactions to events in there to help readers empathize. Looking at chapter 3, there is no conflict. There is no drama. You touch on emotion and physical reactions just a bit when you describe Karrin's face. "She smiled brightly". "Her smile froze...the color left it...". Other than that, its all very sterile and straight-forward. Nothing that I, as a reader, would say "yeah, thats how I would feel or react".

Learn some about scene description. Taking chapter 3 for example, I know that maggie starts off in her room. Then she's suddenly at Aunt Murphy's house. Her door has woodwork. We know what Karrin was wearing when she answered the door. But that's all we know about scene _from you_. It only seems to work because your readers have read the Dresden books where all that stuff has been described in great detail. So we have a mental image already built up in our heads. But you need to provide that in your stories.

Do not be disheartened by my review. Writing is hard. Putting your efforts out there and inviting others to criticize your work (which we often translate as criticism of self) is even harder. I appreciate your work and thank you for sharing it with us.

Ummm... I'd give you props if you're a middle school or early high school kid who's writing this. It shows promise, so I apologize in advance, because criticisms are a b****h, I know. But I'm trying to help you get better. So, the things that I noticed:

1) Paragraphs. The lack is the very first thing I noticed about your story, and it makes me very much not want to read it, because a lack of paragraphs really hurts my eyes and makes you seem like a bad writer straight away.

You need a new one every time there's a different person speaking, and whenever you feel that a larger break is appropriate; a new action, a completely new thought, etc. Try to keep it less than five sentences, if you can. Look at any book you've got for a baseline of what it should look like, if you want to.

2) Never, ever break from the story. Having a voice in your writing is fine - heck, it's awesome - but you shouldn't use words like "anyways." If she's walking down the street, she's walking down the street. Don't stop to tell us about her life, and then jump straight back into the story again. Either don't start telling us at all, and slip in those facts as you go along, or spend /more/ time on her description, and don't even /start/ telling us that she's walking until you're ready.

3) Why would it be getting dark right after school? School usually ends at 3:00. Even on the shortest day of the year, sunset would be almost two hours after that. Did she have a really, really long walk home (I would be seriously complaining about that if it were me)? Did she have to stay late? And you really don't have to go into detail about why nobody could pick her up. All you have to say is "nobody could pick me up."

4) That wasn't a fight scene. That was barely a prelude to a fight scene. More action! More fear! More kicking monster butt! Why do you think I'm reading this? ;D

5) Okay, Charity is like... a seriously protective mother bear. Do you think she'd info-dump like that? I can't see it, personally. She'd be like "yeah, it was just a dream" or somesuch. Try to keep her away from the madness for as long as she could. But that one is completely up to you, my friend.